Buklod CSSP successfully launched “Aghambayan,” an initiative to develop leadership and organizational skills through the Galing KAPP program prior to the start of the new academic year.
Incoming freshmen of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP) headed the campaign and decided to use memes as a channel to manifest the unheard perspective of social sciences on the current pandemic in contrast to the natural sciences.
Aghambayan Co-leader Justin Daduya explained, “The social sciences give our response a human face when we literally do not see many human faces outside of our own homes. When everything is reduced to case numbers and death tolls, it’s easy to forget that actual people are on the line in our pandemic response.”
On the other hand, Aghambayan Co-leader Pia Cruz further stated, “Aghambayan aims to show how important the social sciences are, especially during the pandemic. We wanted to make the social sciences as understandable as possible, so we made an information campaign that utilized memes! This was our way of ‘bridging the gap’ between the complex ideas of the social sciences and everyday conversation.”
Days after Aghambayan posted its introductory post on the Buklod CSSP Facebook and Instagram accounts, it published its first meme regarding how the Government blames the public for its own mishandling of the pandemic—citing political science through the Reservoir of Goodwill, which states that the population support merely reflects the government’s effort.
Aghambayan also discussed the hesitancy of anti-vaxxers despite their irrational support for sketchy alternative medicine found on some online platforms. This was explained through the lens of psychology through cognitive dissonance. Aghambayan stated this is when people attempt to rationalize their inconsistent beliefs even going as far as implicitly lying to themselves.
Meanwhile, through the eyes of history, Aghambayan recalled past events to remind that despite lessons from prior pandemics, the Department of Health (DOH) still managed to be inefficient in resolving the Covid-19 pandemic. The post pointed out that even when the Human Immunodeficiency Viruses (HIV) pandemic began in the 1980s, healthcare workers also labored tirelessly yet received fewer incentives—an overtly familiar situation these days.
Aghambayan also zeroed in on the confusing terminologies that continually arise amid the pandemic. ECQ, GCQ, MECQ, with heightened restrictions, granular lockdown, and other exclusive words or jargon, as linguistics refers to them, can confuse a layperson. Along with the ever-diverging decisions of the government, these foreign and vague terms also diminish the clarity of lockdown guidelines, making them ineffective.
Consequently taking a philosophical approach, the campaign argued that every Filipino of legal age has a moral duty to register and vote. The Complicity Argument states that citizens who do not participate in suffrage are morally complicit, as much as the corrupted officials and their enablers, in the election results since even their lack of vote greatly determines the newly incumbent politicians. Therefore, Aghambayan called to #ExtendTheReg after countless lockdowns brought by incompetent office-holders, their voters, and complicit citizens.These are not the entirety of the campaign. Aghambayan is yet to publish more humorous and insightful takes of sociology, anthropology, and geography on the pandemic on Buklod CSSP’s Facebook page and Instagram account.
Featured Image by Aghambayan
